WEBVTT Kind: captions; Language: en 00:00:27.001 --> 00:00:29.001 Thank you. 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:04.000 Good morning. Good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are. My name 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:08.001 is Jenny Rose Halperin and I'm the executive director of library features, and we 00:01:08.001 --> 00:01:15.000 are co hosting this webinar with the Internet Archive and are beyond excited to 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:18.000 have our two illustrious scholars with us today. 00:01:18.001 --> 00:01:24.001 So I'm going to start by by suggesting that folks can share their 00:01:24.001 --> 00:01:26.000 questions in the q amp a. 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:31.001 So here are some example questions you might be asking in the q amp a section, 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:36.001 you can also upvote questions if you want to see them asked you can respond to 00:01:36.001 --> 00:01:39.001 questions, we'll have plenty of time for q amp a at the 00:01:39.001 --> 00:01:41.001 end, a little bit over 30 minutes. 00:01:41.001 --> 00:01:44.000 So there's plenty of time for your questions. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:50.000 So again, my name is Jenny Rose Halperin and I'm the executive director of 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:55.000 library futures library futures is a new advocacy organization that's standing up 00:01:55.000 --> 00:02:00.000 for the rights of libraries in the digital age, we work on technology, education, 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:07.000 advocacy and community. And we're always welcoming new coalition members. Chris 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.001 Freeland is also here from the Internet Archive. 00:02:10.001 --> 00:02:17.001 And he will be sharing links throughout along with other folks from the 00:02:17.001 --> 00:02:21.001 Internet Archive, like Caitlin Olson, and they will be. 00:02:21.001 --> 00:02:26.001 We will all be co hosting as well throughout so if you have any questions, and 00:02:26.001 --> 00:02:30.000 definitely please feel free to drop them in the chat will also 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:31.001 be dropping links in the chat throughout. 00:02:33.001 --> 00:02:36.001 I am very excited to introduce our speakers. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:42.000 Michelle Wu, Blake Reed, and our moderator Amanda Lewandowski. 00:02:43.001 --> 00:02:46.001 [...] Reed studies teaches and practices at the intersection 00:02:46.001 --> 00:02:48.001 of law policy and technology. 00:02:49.001 --> 00:02:53.001 He is a clinical professor at Colorado law, where he serves as the director of 00:02:53.001 --> 00:02:59.001 the Samuel Senglushko technology law and policy clinics TLPC, and as the faculty 00:02:59.001 --> 00:03:03.001 director of the telecom and platforms initiative at the silicon 00:03:03.001 --> 00:03:05.001 flat, flat iron center. 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:11.001 Michelle Wu was the associate dean for library services law library director and 00:03:11.001 --> 00:03:16.000 professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to Georgetown she 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:20.001 served in multiple administrative library and faculty capacities at three other 00:03:20.001 --> 00:03:25.001 law schools, George Washington University, the University of Houston and Hofstra. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:31.001 She has a BA from the University of California at San Diego, a JD from West from 00:03:31.001 --> 00:03:35.001 California Western School of Law, and an M library from the 00:03:35.001 --> 00:03:37.000 University of Washington. 00:03:37.001 --> 00:03:41.000 The original, the originator of the legal theory underpinning control digital 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:45.001 lending. Michelle has also talked talk copyright and copyright licensing and 00:03:45.001 --> 00:03:48.001 regularly speaks at library conferences on these topics. 00:03:48.001 --> 00:03:53.001 She has authored or edited several dozen publications on copyright library 00:03:53.001 --> 00:03:57.001 management and leadership, and has provided leadership training for 00:03:57.001 --> 00:03:59.001 prospective directors and associate dean. 00:04:00.001 --> 00:04:05.001 Amanda live and Dowski is an associate professor at Georgetown law, where her 00:04:05.001 --> 00:04:09.001 scholarship examines how intellectual property law can be used creatively to 00:04:09.001 --> 00:04:14.000 address challenging social issues that cross cut privacy and technology, such as 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:18.000 non consensual pornography biased artificial intelligence, secret surveillance 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:23.001 technology, and invasive face surveillance. Thank you so much for joining us 00:04:23.001 --> 00:04:26.001 everyone and I'm sorry if you could hear it's a bit of an occupational 00:04:26.001 --> 00:04:28.001 hazard of working from home. 00:04:28.001 --> 00:04:35.000 But I am sorry if you could hear my dog behind me, who was walking around who's 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:41.001 been walking around through this very short intro. And so I'm so excited to hand 00:04:41.001 --> 00:04:47.000 it over to Amanda to kick it off and discuss these two new papers and scholarship 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:53.001 in copyright librarianship accessibility and the law and technology. So over 00:04:53.001 --> 00:04:55.000 to you Amanda Thank you so much. 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:01.001 Hello, I am so delighted to be here with all of you but especially with Michelle 00:05:01.001 --> 00:05:06.000 and Blake whose work I just admire so darn much and I cannot wait to get into. 00:05:06.001 --> 00:05:09.001 So I'm actually going to turn it over to them in just a second to speak about 00:05:09.001 --> 00:05:13.000 their own work because who better to introduce it than the authors themselves, 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:15.000 but to set up that conversation. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:19.001 I just want to say that Michelle and Blake both take very different approaches to 00:05:19.001 --> 00:05:23.001 the challenges that are created by copyright maximalism but there are a few 00:05:23.001 --> 00:05:28.001 common approaches spanning copyrights heated history, it's problematic present, 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:34.000 and it's possibly fantastic future. And there are also a few shared themes 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:38.000 between the two papers and I love a triplet as you just saw. So we'll be 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.001 addressing those three themes throughout this conversation. 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:45.001 And those are overarching going to be policies, capitalism, and accessibility 00:05:45.001 --> 00:05:49.000 doesn't that sound like fun. And so let's dive in and I'm going to turn it over 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:52.000 straight to Michelle to share a little bit more about her work. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:59.000 Amanda, so there's more time for Q&A. I'm not going to recap the entire paper but 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:01.000 really just focus on two major points. 00:06:01.001 --> 00:06:05.000 The first point is on the purpose of copyright, which has always been the 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:09.000 creation of dissemination of information. And that's what this flows very 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:13.000 logically from the design of our nation and our government, which best powers in 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:14.001 the people, not a monarch. 00:06:14.001 --> 00:06:20.001 So that's in all of our interests for us to have informed voters and in order to 00:06:20.001 --> 00:06:22.001 be informed they actually have to have access to information. 00:06:23.001 --> 00:06:27.000 The founders and Congress decided that the best way to generate and spread 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:30.000 information was through a balance of private and public interest. 00:06:30.001 --> 00:06:34.000 With the set of private interest, that really is the author's interest. So 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:38.000 copyright grants limited control rights to the author, and that's essentially for 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:40.000 her to generate income from selling her work. 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:45.000 And that hopefully incentivizes her to create more. But after a copyrighted item 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:49.001 is sold, the private interest in that item is exhausted, leaving only the public 00:06:49.001 --> 00:06:52.000 interest in consumption and the further spread of information. 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:57.000 Now we will note there are a few exceptions, mostly in the public use of 00:06:57.000 --> 00:06:59.001 copyrighted work, but that is beyond the scope of this paper 00:06:59.001 --> 00:07:01.000 so I'm going to skip over that for now. 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:05.001 In practice, what does the balance between private and public interest mean in 00:07:05.001 --> 00:07:09.000 copyright? It means that the author makes money when she sells a copy of her 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:13.000 work, say a book, but that the purchaser, once they purchased it, can lend, 00:07:13.001 --> 00:07:17.001 donate, resell, destroy or bequeath it without the author's permission. 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:21.001 This downstream usability means that an item's usefulness expands 00:07:21.001 --> 00:07:23.000 far beyond that original purchase. 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:28.000 The key is that copyright was never intended to be a barrier to information. Its 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:32.001 balance was designed to maximize both the creation and spread of information. 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:38.000 So the second point in my paper is about how major publishers in books, music, 00:07:38.001 --> 00:07:43.000 television and movie publishing are engaged in a pattern of practice that 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:45.000 undermines this very purpose of copyright. 00:07:46.001 --> 00:07:50.001 And I'm going to talk about just one example here, but I'm happy to talk about 00:07:50.001 --> 00:07:54.001 others in a Q&A if there's interest. The example that I'll look at is licensing. 00:07:55.000 --> 00:07:59.001 So major publishers in these fields have largely eliminated the ability to 00:07:59.001 --> 00:08:02.001 purchase a copy of the work when it comes to electronic content. 00:08:02.001 --> 00:08:08.000 So sometimes this is hidden in a way that I think users don't really realize what 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:13.000 they're losing. So, for example, when you buy an e-book on Amazon, you actually 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:15.000 have not purchased that book. 00:08:15.001 --> 00:08:19.001 What you have done is you're licensing access to that book. Underterms that 00:08:19.001 --> 00:08:24.001 Amazon says it can change at any time without notice, including deleting that 00:08:24.001 --> 00:08:26.001 book entirely from your library. 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:31.001 Many of the public interests that I mentioned at the start, the right to lend, 00:08:31.001 --> 00:08:38.000 donate, resell, bequease, are excluded or limited in these licenses, which means 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:42.000 that many of the paths designed by copyright to allow for widespread downstream 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:46.001 use, particularly by those who do not have the personal means to buy it at its 00:08:46.001 --> 00:08:49.000 original price, those paths have been cut off. 00:08:49.001 --> 00:08:55.000 In addition, many common personal uses, such as recording a TV program, are also 00:08:55.000 --> 00:09:00.000 prohibited. They would normally be legal under copyright under fair use, but in a 00:09:00.000 --> 00:09:03.000 service like Netflix, recording that program is considered a 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:04.001 violation of its contract terms. 00:09:05.001 --> 00:09:09.001 The replacement of selling with licensing doesn't just harm the public or 00:09:09.001 --> 00:09:11.001 individual users, but also offers. 00:09:12.001 --> 00:09:16.001 The e-books available at your public library, for example, often cost many times 00:09:16.001 --> 00:09:19.001 more than the cost of that print equivalent or the cost 00:09:19.001 --> 00:09:21.001 of that e-book to an individual user. 00:09:21.001 --> 00:09:27.001 And these licenses usually expire after a certain number of uses, say 24 or after 00:09:27.001 --> 00:09:32.000 a certain period of time, say a year, which means that the same content has to be 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:34.000 repurchased repeatedly to retain access. 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:38.001 As the library's budget does not magically increase to accommodate these 00:09:38.001 --> 00:09:42.001 arbitrarily increased costs, the library ends up spending the same amount of 00:09:42.001 --> 00:09:45.000 money while obtaining fewer books. 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:50.000 This means that fewer authors' works are being purchased, and fewer authors will 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:52.000 give a non-monetary benefit of heightened exposure 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:54.000 to their work through library access. 00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:00.000 While some authors, specifically best-selling ones, will undoubtedly benefit from 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:02.000 this type of licensing, most authors won't. 00:10:02.001 --> 00:10:06.000 The publishers, on the other hand, can make a great deal more money off fewer 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:09.001 titles while also reaping the benefits of lower costs of e 00:10:09.001 --> 00:10:11.000 -production and e-distribution. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:16.001 Now, I've already detailed some of the short-term costs of these licenses, the 00:10:16.001 --> 00:10:21.000 loss of all those downstream uses, but I want to mention or emphasize the fact 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:25.000 that the poor are disproportionately harmed, as many may have no means to gain 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:27.001 access to these resources without the secondhand 00:10:27.001 --> 00:10:29.001 uses now prohibited by publishers. 00:10:30.000 --> 00:10:34.001 The long-term costs fall on everyone. E-books cannot be preserved under these 00:10:34.001 --> 00:10:38.001 licenses, so e-books that are available today may not be available tomorrow. 00:10:38.001 --> 00:10:43.000 The only, if the only information that's available to us is what publishers 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:47.001 decide to make available, and which we or our libraries can afford to pay for. 00:10:47.001 --> 00:10:51.000 That day, that information will necessarily be a small 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:53.000 subset of all information published. 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:57.000 Society will lose the ability to explore history, to know what was real or 00:10:57.000 --> 00:10:59.000 what was published at any given time. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:04.001 In summary, copyright was intended to further the creation and dissemination of 00:11:04.001 --> 00:11:08.000 information, but major publishers have used it to do the exact opposite, 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:12.000 depressing information's preservation and spread, and the corruption of copyright 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:14.000 should concern everyone. Thank you. 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:15.001 Thank you. 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:24.000 Amazing. I'm so excited to dive into this piece, but first I want to put it into 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:28.000 conversation with Blake's piece and I'm going to let Blake say a few words about 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:33.000 his work before we dive into the amazing synergies and overlap between the 00:11:33.000 --> 00:11:34.001 two. So Blake, over to you. 00:11:35.001 --> 00:11:40.000 Hey, thanks, Amanda, and thanks, Michelle, for the wonderful presentation and I 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:44.000 hope folks will check out Michelle's paper, which if you haven't seen Chris 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:45.001 has linked in the chat. 00:11:46.001 --> 00:11:50.000 Also, just wanted to say thanks to everybody at the archive and Library Futures 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:54.000 for putting this together. And I should offer a quick disclaimer up front, which 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:59.000 is that I'm speaking only for myself and not for any of my clients or my clinic. 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:05.001 So, this paper is a little bit more specific than the topic 00:12:05.001 --> 00:12:11.000 that Michelle brought up and it's diving in on this specific intersection of 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:13.001 disability and accessibility and copyright. 00:12:13.001 --> 00:12:17.001 And the goal I have with this paper is to better articulate the role that 00:12:17.001 --> 00:12:23.001 copyright law plays in the accessibility of creative works and the prevailing 00:12:23.001 --> 00:12:27.001 narrative around this stuff is pretty copyright centric that copyright exceptions 00:12:27.001 --> 00:12:32.000 and limitations are really essential to ensuring the accessibility 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:33.001 of creative works. 00:12:33.001 --> 00:12:37.001 And for anyone that's followed the Marrakesh Treaty, this is the sort of 00:12:37.001 --> 00:12:44.000 discourse around the Marrakesh Treaty, that by bringing into effect a series of 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:50.000 national laws that include limitations and exceptions to transform books into 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:55.000 braille and alternate format copies that we're going to end the so called book 00:12:55.000 --> 00:13:01.000 famine that exists for braille readers and for other folks who rely on different 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:07.000 kinds of accessible formats to be made. And it centers the conversation around 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:10.001 permission from rights holders and from publishers in particular. 00:13:10.001 --> 00:13:15.001 And I found is I've done a lot of work in this area that there's not a lot of 00:13:15.001 --> 00:13:20.001 focus on the threshold question of why does accessibility or what is copyright 00:13:20.001 --> 00:13:24.000 gets suffused into accessibility policy in the first place. 00:13:24.001 --> 00:13:29.000 And this is a common question when I talk with folks who are whose primary 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:32.001 concern is with disability rights. Why are we talking about 00:13:32.001 --> 00:13:34.001 copyright? Why are we here? 00:13:34.001 --> 00:13:40.001 Because the real goal is about how we make books accessible and how we make the 00:13:40.001 --> 00:13:45.000 various social structures, whether that's education, our work, our culture, our 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:48.001 entertainment or democracy or whatever else that books enable 00:13:48.001 --> 00:13:50.001 to make them accessible. 00:13:50.001 --> 00:13:54.000 Why aren't we talking about that? Why are we spending so much time talking about 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:59.001 copyright? So in this paper, I did a historical review of two case studies, one 00:13:59.001 --> 00:14:04.001 diving into tactile printing or braille, sort of the most common version of that. 00:14:04.001 --> 00:14:08.001 And closed captioning of television programming and I'll just talk about the 00:14:08.001 --> 00:14:13.001 braille example for a second, happy to get into the other one in the Q&A. 00:14:14.001 --> 00:14:21.000 And so the findings that I did as I went into the history of braille and 00:14:21.000 --> 00:14:26.000 tactile printing policy in this country about why copyright and accessibility 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:28.000 got wrapped up with each other. 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:35.000 I got to triple it, Amanda. So number one, we've got this non economic and it's 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:40.000 not really even a moral rights driven insistence on the part of publishers, not 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:44.000 authors but publishers, to be asked permission, even when they've got 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:45.001 no interest in withholding it. 00:14:45.001 --> 00:14:50.000 So you see this real interest in being asked permission. That's number one. 00:14:50.001 --> 00:14:56.001 Number two, I think you see proximity of the creation of braille books 00:14:56.001 --> 00:15:02.001 to the growth of copyright maximalism and permission culture and policy making 00:15:02.001 --> 00:15:07.001 institutions and the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office in particular. 00:15:07.001 --> 00:15:14.000 So it turns out that the National Library Service for the Blind ends up 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:18.001 being operated by the Library of Congress and comes into ascendancy right around 00:15:18.001 --> 00:15:23.000 the same time that the Library of Congress plays, starts to play a more pivotal 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:28.000 role in copyright policy because of its housing of the Copyright Office. 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:34.000 So proximity to institutions, number two. And then the third one is the focus of 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:38.001 the disability rights movement through the 1970s through the early 1990s 00:15:38.001 --> 00:15:42.001 culminating with the Americans with Disabilities Act on places of public 00:15:42.001 --> 00:15:44.001 accommodation and government services. 00:15:44.001 --> 00:15:50.001 So schools, libraries and other intermediaries for copyrighted works and not 00:15:50.001 --> 00:15:54.001 copyright holders themselves as the locus for where do we do accessibility. 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:59.000 We don't expect publishers to do it. We expect libraries to do it. We expect 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:03.000 schools to do it. We expect other third parties to do it. And so I think those 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:09.001 three factors, the sort of the insistence on permission, the proximity to 00:16:09.001 --> 00:16:14.000 policy making institutions that really care about copyright and this focus on 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:17.001 third party accessibility are what brings us there. 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:26.000 So basically, we see this all really materialized in the legislative hearings for 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:30.001 the 1976 Copyright Act. We see these demands, publisher demands for permission. 00:16:30.001 --> 00:16:35.000 And we actually get this codified in Section 710 of the Copyright Act, which is 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:40.001 the basically the Copyright Office gets to create standard forms for publishers 00:16:40.001 --> 00:16:42.001 to grant the office with permission. 00:16:43.000 --> 00:16:47.001 And then we see a couple of decades of that not really working of delays in 00:16:47.001 --> 00:16:50.000 braille books being created by the National Library Service. 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:55.001 And so we finally make permission compulsory with the Chafee Amendment to the 00:16:55.001 --> 00:17:00.000 Copyright Act. And the Chafee Amendment is basically the first kind of specific 00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:03.001 exception limitation that we see in US law. 00:17:03.001 --> 00:17:08.000 And that forms the basis, at least in significant part of the Marrakesh Treaty 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:10.001 and its subsequent updates in the United States. 00:17:10.001 --> 00:17:16.000 So in other words, we lay the Marrakesh Treaty, which is now coming into effect 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:20.001 being implemented in countries all over the world. And what it really does is it 00:17:20.001 --> 00:17:26.000 brings us back to the status quo of kind of pre-Civil War 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:28.001 policy around braille books. 00:17:28.001 --> 00:17:34.001 It sort of takes copyright out of a place that copyright wasn't at the beginning. 00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:41.001 And so I think we talk about it as groundbreaking and as bringing an end to the 00:17:41.001 --> 00:17:45.000 book, but it really sort of just brings us back to where we started. 00:17:45.001 --> 00:17:49.001 And we've got all of these other problems. How do we pay for book accessibility? 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:54.000 How do we pay for the ecosystem around book accessibility? Who 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:56.000 should internalize the cost? 00:17:56.000 --> 00:18:01.000 What is the role that publishers should play beyond being asked permission and 00:18:01.000 --> 00:18:06.000 giving permission? And what we see as a result is we still have enormous gaps in 00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:11.000 the availability of accessible books and the book famine remains very real. 00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:16.001 And I'll just say, and I'll wind this up, that we see the opposite with 00:18:16.001 --> 00:18:20.000 captioning, which happens in another institution, the Federal Communications 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:25.000 Commission, that's far away from policy that bypasses third parties and goes to 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:28.000 the industry directly for accessibility obligations. 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:34.000 And we see pretty widely different results. So I'll just wind up and say, you 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:39.001 know, we focus on copyright limitations and exceptions as this necessary legacy 00:18:39.001 --> 00:18:44.000 of centralizing accessibility obligations with intermediaries. 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:49.001 But negotiating permission shouldn't be our only focus. It's really cost free to 00:18:49.001 --> 00:18:54.000 industrial rights holders to give permission and that permission doesn't solve 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:57.001 the broader economic barriers to making works accessible. 00:18:58.001 --> 00:19:02.000 And more broadly, I think it underscores that the copyright system is not always 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:07.000 really fit for solving access as a public good, as Michelle laid out at the 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:11.000 beginning. We had pretty grand visions for what copyright would do as this 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:12.001 engine of democracy. 00:19:12.001 --> 00:19:19.000 And I think it fails at that purpose when we center copyright and make copyright 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:23.001 the only lens through which we solve these problems. And so I urge in the paper, 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:29.000 de-centering copyright in our policymaking approaches, and think about copyright 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:35.000 holders as potentially being responsible directly for providing public goods. 00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:37.000 All right, I think I've gone too long. So Amanda, 00:19:37.001 --> 00:19:39.000 I'll stop there and hand it back to you. 00:19:42.000 --> 00:19:44.001 You didn't go too long at all. That was that was perfect. 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:52.001 Let me later. Okay, so let's get both of y'all in the conversation. We're going 00:19:52.001 --> 00:19:55.001 to do some Wild West stuff so you can both chime in whenever. 00:19:56.001 --> 00:20:01.001 Okay, so before so you both kind of took us on a like a little copyright journey 00:20:01.001 --> 00:20:06.000 from the purpose of copyright, which you both defined differently to where we are 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:09.001 today and I'm going to take us even beyond that to copyright's potential future. 00:20:09.001 --> 00:20:14.000 But I want to go back to the beginning and dive into copyright's kind of heated 00:20:14.000 --> 00:20:16.000 historical context, which you both address 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:18.000 in your papers from different perspectives. 00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:23.001 So we know how the Constitution describes the purpose of copyright. Michelle, you 00:20:23.001 --> 00:20:26.001 defined it as the creation and dissemination of information and Blake, 00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:28.001 you framed it more as accessibility. 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:34.000 So how have these purposes historically informed copyright policy and if you want 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:38.000 to get really specific and concrete, what is a key example of a policy or case 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:41.000 law decision that promotes the purposes that y'all those to envision. 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.000 I actually think we might both name I could be wrong about this like that I think 00:20:49.000 --> 00:20:55.001 about happy trust case is actually a good illustration of what I'm trying 00:20:55.001 --> 00:20:57.000 to balance all the interesting copyright. 00:20:58.001 --> 00:21:02.000 Yeah, yeah, jump in. I want you to both say why if you both agree with that. 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:08.000 Yeah, I completely agree. So I mean, I think back to, you know, the progress 00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:13.000 clause and I actually don't think there's that much differentiation between what 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:16.001 Michelle and I are saying is the as the sort of framing of the progress clause, 00:21:16.001 --> 00:21:35.000 whether that's about to be the interest of the First Amendment and in 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:40.001 facilitating that that sort of discussion around democracy, that sort ofdaughter 00:21:40.001 --> 00:21:45.001 that we expect in the United States, and I think the reason Michelle I want to 00:21:45.001 --> 00:21:48.001 take words out of your mouth but I imagine the reason and we both go to 00:21:48.001 --> 00:21:53.001 HathiTrust is, you know, fair use is where a lot of the rubber meets 00:21:53.001 --> 00:21:55.001 the road on this stuff. 00:21:56.000 --> 00:22:00.000 And HathiTrust is a case that really underscores that and it underscores it in 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:01.001 a lot of different ways, right? 00:22:01.001 --> 00:22:04.001 And Michelle, I'll defer to you to talk to the library piece of it, but the 00:22:04.001 --> 00:22:11.000 accessibility piece of it is basically saying, hey, we recognize through the 00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:15.000 creation of the, or the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act and 00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:21.001 various other disability laws that making works accessible is consonant with fair 00:22:21.001 --> 00:22:26.001 use and consonant as, you know, in an indirect way with the First Amendment. 00:22:26.001 --> 00:22:30.001 And so that sort of gets us straight back to that constitutional bedrock. 00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:34.001 And that was one of the first times we've seen a court really specifically 00:22:34.001 --> 00:22:39.001 recognize and say, hey, you know, we've got directives from other areas of 00:22:39.001 --> 00:22:43.000 policy, not just copyright, that sort of lead us to those results. 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:45.001 So that's sort of my rationalization of the whole thing. 00:22:45.001 --> 00:22:46.001 Michelle, I don't know what you think. 00:22:47.001 --> 00:22:50.001 Yeah, and I agree entirely with Lake that I don't think that 00:22:50.001 --> 00:22:52.000 our approaches are really all that different. 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:56.000 The only way that it can feed democracy is if the information is actually 00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:59.000 accessible to everyone, not just to a subset of the 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:00.001 population that has to be accessible to everyone. 00:23:00.001 --> 00:23:02.000 So I do agree with that general principle. 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:06.000 In terms of HathiTrust, I actually think it doesn't go far enough, but the reason 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:10.001 why I would name it is because it does recognize that fair use recognizes, again, 00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:15.000 I should say that fair use allows for uses that the authors might or copyright 00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.000 owners might want to stop, that there are some uses that are so publicly 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:25.000 beneficial that it warrants taking even the entirety of the work, even making 00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.000 multiple copies of the work, even making works freely available to people. 00:23:29.000 --> 00:23:33.001 That can go to the very, very extreme of doing that without paying an 00:23:33.001 --> 00:23:35.001 author additional fees. 00:23:36.001 --> 00:23:39.000 And fair use can actually accommodate that, which I think 00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:41.000 is what copyright was about. 00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:46.000 Yeah, and for the folks following along who may not be super familiar with the 00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:50.001 HathiTrust decision, this was about the digitization of books by a library that 00:23:50.001 --> 00:23:55.000 served certified disabled patrons so that they could have access to books that 00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:57.000 might not otherwise be made available by publishers. 00:23:57.001 --> 00:24:02.001 And there was litigation challenging this digitization that eventually was 00:24:02.001 --> 00:24:07.001 vindicated under the fair use doctrine, saying that even though this was not 00:24:07.001 --> 00:24:11.001 totally different in form, it was serving a really important purpose that was 00:24:11.001 --> 00:24:15.000 fundamentally different than how these books were made to go out into the world. 00:24:15.001 --> 00:24:18.001 And I think what's so interesting is that this is literally at the intersection 00:24:18.001 --> 00:24:20.001 of your two papers focus, right? 00:24:21.000 --> 00:24:25.001 Libraries and disability rights, and this sits right directly in the middle, but 00:24:25.001 --> 00:24:28.000 also connects exactly what you were saying, right? 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:32.001 The dissemination, creation and dissemination, accessibility, they're actually 00:24:32.001 --> 00:24:36.001 both part of the broader principle of having an informed democracy, which is kind 00:24:36.001 --> 00:24:39.000 of the ultimate goal of copyright. 00:24:39.001 --> 00:24:43.000 But we're moving further and further away from that goal, and you both talk about 00:24:43.000 --> 00:24:45.000 that in your papers in different ways. 00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.001 So could you each pinpoint a place where copyright began to become unmoored from 00:24:49.001 --> 00:24:51.000 the purposes we've identified? 00:24:51.001 --> 00:24:55.000 In other words, how did copyright become a barrier to accessing information 00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:57.000 rather than a means of incentivizing it? 00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:03.001 Amanda, I wonder if I could take just a threshold question before we get to 00:25:03.001 --> 00:25:07.001 copyright as a barrier and just say- You can, you are entitled to do so. 00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:08.001 Thank you. 00:25:09.000 --> 00:25:12.000 I'm in a very permissioned culture mindset here. 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:19.000 I guess the question that I have is, when we look at the progress clause and we 00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:23.000 look at, so we talked a lot about fair use, but we look at the progress clause, 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:25.001 which says we've got this aim that we wanna serve. 00:25:25.001 --> 00:25:30.001 And I think Michelle articulated that aim really powerfully in her paper. 00:25:31.001 --> 00:25:37.000 We have never successfully used the progress clause or related constitutional 00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:40.000 doctrines to examine whether copyright is really 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:42.001 succeeding at that purpose, right? 00:25:42.001 --> 00:25:47.001 We have sort of looked to fair use as a way out of the barriers, but we've never 00:25:47.001 --> 00:25:52.001 looked at, at least not with any success at the progress clauses, as a check to 00:25:52.001 --> 00:25:56.001 see, is Congress achieving what it set out to do in 00:25:56.001 --> 00:25:58.001 creating the copyright system, right? 00:25:58.001 --> 00:26:02.000 And in other words, and the way that I would look at it, this specific problem I 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:06.001 would look at it is, I would say, is the copyright system resulting in books 00:26:06.001 --> 00:26:09.001 being distributed in accessible formats? 00:26:09.001 --> 00:26:13.000 And maybe beyond that, is the copyright system working for creators 00:26:13.000 --> 00:26:15.000 with disabilities as well? 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:21.000 So I think before we even get to barriers, we have this threshold failure, which 00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:26.001 is that the Supreme Court has largely looked at the Copyright Act and said, 00:26:26.001 --> 00:26:30.000 whatever Congress sort of thinks on that is fine. 00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:35.000 We're not going to exercise a heavy hand in terms of scrutinizing how the 00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:36.001 Copyright Act actually works. 00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:41.000 We're going to leave fair use as the safety valve in a couple of other things, 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:43.000 and we'll sort of look at it from there. 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:46.001 I don't think Congress has done a particularly good job. 00:26:47.000 --> 00:26:51.000 And I think in the research I was doing on the 76 Act when it was passed here in 00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:55.000 looking at accessibility, there was very little questioning of, 00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:57.000 how is this actually working? 00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:01.001 All the questioning was really about, is this okay with the publishers, right? 00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:07.001 Is this, can we craft this in a way that makes the publishers happy? 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:13.000 And so I think this broader array of social concerns about the creation of 00:27:13.000 --> 00:27:16.000 copyrighted works never really gets hashed out in the 00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:17.001 examination of the Copyright Act. 00:27:17.001 --> 00:27:20.001 We're only dealing with it after the fact with safety valves like 00:27:20.001 --> 00:27:22.000 fair use, which is a real problem. 00:27:24.000 --> 00:27:26.001 I would agree 100% of the way. 00:27:27.000 --> 00:27:32.000 I mean, I think if you look back at all the major legislation, 1909, 1976, and 00:27:32.000 --> 00:27:36.000 take a look at the testimony, it has been weighted towards the publishers who 00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:39.001 technically were not one of the beneficiaries of the Copyright Clause. 00:27:40.001 --> 00:27:43.000 So it's actually pretty curious to me how much of a role they play. 00:27:43.000 --> 00:27:47.000 And obviously with the money that's being sent to mobbing right now, that 00:27:47.000 --> 00:27:48.001 extends that instance even further. 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:52.001 But if I had to draw a line in terms of how the [...] used, in terms of where I 00:27:52.001 --> 00:27:54.001 think it got significantly worse. 00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:58.000 I agree 100% was like that it never met the promise. 00:27:58.001 --> 00:28:01.000 It never did exactly what it was supposed to do. 00:28:02.000 --> 00:28:07.000 And Congress has not been particularly vigilant about trying to make it, to meet, 00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:09.000 be better, a better fit for those purposes. 00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:13.000 I would say two things probably. 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:19.001 One is the Copyright Extension Act, when the Supreme Court essentially says 00:28:19.001 --> 00:28:23.000 Congress can expand copyright for as long as it was, as long as it's not forever, 00:28:23.001 --> 00:28:25.000 and technology. 00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:30.000 And the reason why I would name technology is because it allowed publishers to 00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:35.001 essentially put a bunch of prior restraints on copyright, even before we get to 00:28:35.001 --> 00:28:38.001 the copyright issues, they're able to control the use of the copyright work. 00:28:39.000 --> 00:28:41.001 And as an example, it is a licensing piece. 00:28:41.001 --> 00:28:45.001 So there are a lot of actions that are legitimate, that are considered either 00:28:45.001 --> 00:28:51.000 statutorily legitimate, like resale, or fair 00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:53.000 use, like the recording and TV program. 00:28:53.001 --> 00:28:56.001 That publishers can just stop users from doing two license terms. 00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:01.000 They stop you by contract before you even get to the copyright issues. 00:29:01.001 --> 00:29:05.000 But they use those licenses, or they argue that they're using 00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:06.001 licenses to protect copyright. 00:29:07.001 --> 00:29:12.000 So in that way, technology, I think, ended up having a particularly negative 00:29:12.000 --> 00:29:15.001 effect, when I actually think it could have been extraordinarily empowering, 00:29:16.000 --> 00:29:18.001 especially in the case of disabilities. 00:29:19.001 --> 00:29:25.000 I mean, if you take a look at Amazon, Amazon had text-to-speech technology fairly 00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:28.001 early on for its books, and the publishers objected to that. 00:29:29.000 --> 00:29:32.000 Despite the fact that people who wanted to use that feature had purchased that 00:29:32.000 --> 00:29:34.000 book, they had already paid the copyright order. 00:29:34.001 --> 00:29:38.001 So technology could have been used to actually create a more equal world. 00:29:39.000 --> 00:29:44.000 But we have somehow allowed publishers to step in and suppress equality instead. 00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:49.001 That actually brings me to one of the shared themes of your two papers, even 00:29:49.001 --> 00:29:51.001 though you come at it from different directions, which is the congressional 00:29:51.001 --> 00:29:55.001 adoption of policies that continue to privilege copyright owners' interests, 00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:58.000 including piracy concerns, which you both talk about in your 00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:00.000 papers, over the public's interest. 00:30:00.001 --> 00:30:06.001 So if you had to say that there was a policy that most restricted the public 00:30:06.001 --> 00:30:10.000 access to knowledge, would either of you address the Digital Millennium Copyright 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:13.000 Act as a restriction on that, or is there another way to think about 00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:15.000 the DMCA and its intervention? 00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.001 Because it is, as Michelle alluded to, kind of what got in the way of 00:30:19.001 --> 00:30:21.000 technology's promise in some ways. 00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:26.000 And I'm also biased because I'm wearing my Run DMCA sweater, so I want to talk 00:30:26.000 --> 00:30:27.001 about the DMCA a little bit. 00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:30.000 Oh, you want to take this one first? 00:30:32.001 --> 00:30:36.001 So the DMCA is tremendously problematic, or at least the provisions on 00:30:36.001 --> 00:30:40.001 circumvention or anti-circumvention are particularly problematic, primarily 00:30:40.001 --> 00:30:43.001 because they do stop all sorts of fair uses. 00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:51.001 I think that it was a way to accomplish the goal or what the publishers wanted to 00:30:51.001 --> 00:30:57.000 accomplish or what Congress wanted to accomplish without necessarily making the 00:30:57.000 --> 00:31:00.000 prohibition against circumvention as broad as it was. 00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.000 For example, they could have built in a fair use exception, that any type of fair 00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:08.000 use you could actually circumvent as long as you weren't infringing on copyright. 00:31:08.001 --> 00:31:10.000 But they chose not to do that. 00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.000 And that did, I think, stand in the way of a lot of fair uses. 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:22.001 Yeah, I mean, as a longstanding veteran of the Section 1201 exemption 00:31:22.001 --> 00:31:29.000 process, I will say, there's no shortage of examples 00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:36.000 of the DMCA getting in the way by sort of standing as a backstop for 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:41.001 digital locks that prevent accessibility, that prevent format shifting, that 00:31:41.001 --> 00:31:48.001 prevent creativity and remix, that prevent security research and repair. 00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:56.000 And the list goes on of the sort of public goods and very important public 00:31:56.000 --> 00:32:03.000 goods that can't as a matter of law be produced under the DMCA without 00:32:03.000 --> 00:32:06.000 wrangling with this incredibly complex process that the 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:07.001 Copyright Office administers. 00:32:08.001 --> 00:32:13.001 On the other hand, I also see that in a lot of those cases, and I think 00:32:13.001 --> 00:32:20.000 accessibility is a good one, that we're fighting in those to get to a not great 00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:26.001 result, which is, for example, thinking about ebook accessibility, we're fighting 00:32:26.001 --> 00:32:33.000 for the ability for a library or for a person with a disability to be able to 00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:37.000 strip off digital rights management so that they can make a book accessible. 00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:42.000 That's solving, in my mind, that's solving like a 00:32:42.000 --> 00:32:44.000 very small part of that problem. 00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:45.001 And it's a really important part of the problem. 00:32:45.001 --> 00:32:48.001 It's a threshold part of the problem, but it doesn't get us 00:32:48.001 --> 00:32:50.000 to an accessible book, right? 00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:56.001 It doesn't guarantee that the resources are gonna be there on the other side to 00:32:56.001 --> 00:33:02.001 make a library's whole collection accessible or that they're not still gonna 00:33:02.001 --> 00:33:04.000 have to go jump through hoops. 00:33:04.001 --> 00:33:08.001 And seeing the demonstrations of how some of that works, when you compare what 00:33:08.001 --> 00:33:13.000 it's like if you are just trying to buy a book on the Kindle store, buy a book 00:33:13.000 --> 00:33:19.001 from Apple Books or whatever, or just to go get a book from a library, and then 00:33:19.001 --> 00:33:23.000 looking through the process that somebody with a disability has to go through, 00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:28.001 all those extra steps that it takes, and copyright is one of them, and it's an 00:33:28.001 --> 00:33:31.000 important one, but there's all these additional steps. 00:33:31.001 --> 00:33:34.001 And I think that resonates with a lot of the other areas that 00:33:34.001 --> 00:33:36.000 we're talking about here, right? 00:33:36.001 --> 00:33:42.001 I think a lot of the things that we frame as copyright problems are also 00:33:42.001 --> 00:33:44.000 consumer protection problems. 00:33:44.001 --> 00:33:50.000 They are, this is, Michelle, you talked a lot about terms of service, right? 00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.001 This is just people being sold things that they don't understand how they're 00:33:54.001 --> 00:33:58.001 gonna work and what they're gonna be allowed to do with it until after the fact, 00:33:58.001 --> 00:34:04.000 until after they press buy on it, and then suddenly they can't do something that 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:07.001 they're used to, or it gets taken away, it gets taken out of their library, the 00:34:07.001 --> 00:34:09.000 license gets revoked. 00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:13.001 And I think if you talk to most people, they don't think, well, gosh, I ought to 00:34:13.001 --> 00:34:16.000 be able to go in there and hack my way out of it. 00:34:16.001 --> 00:34:19.001 I think the first thing that they think about is, gee, I got ripped off. 00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:22.001 Like that really stinks, and I would like my money 00:34:22.001 --> 00:34:24.001 back, or I would like my book back. 00:34:24.001 --> 00:34:27.000 Like, can't somebody come in and fix it? 00:34:28.000 --> 00:34:31.001 So copyright gives us this kind of libertarian way, or when we think about 00:34:31.001 --> 00:34:34.000 limitations and exceptions, gives us this libertarian 00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:35.001 way of solving these problems. 00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:38.000 And that's often like the best we've got, right? 00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:43.001 But I also think there's this additional step, which is like, we deserve better. 00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:45.001 Like these systems should work better than this. 00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:47.001 Like books should be born accessible. 00:34:48.000 --> 00:34:53.001 Like, you know, like work should be licensed on friendly terms so that you can go 00:34:53.001 --> 00:34:56.000 do the stuff with your books that you used to do with your books. 00:34:56.001 --> 00:34:59.000 Like, why can't we buy things that work that way? 00:34:59.001 --> 00:35:03.000 And I'm not sure copyright, either on the front end or on limitations and 00:35:03.000 --> 00:35:05.001 exceptions, has the answers to all of those questions. 00:35:06.001 --> 00:35:09.001 I don't think it has the answer to huge numbers of those questions. 00:35:09.001 --> 00:35:13.000 One of the ones Michelle brought up is contract law, which I think is very 00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:15.000 important in this shift away from ownership to licensing, 00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:17.000 especially in the digital context. 00:35:17.001 --> 00:35:20.001 But like, you've also brought up consumer protection law. 00:35:20.001 --> 00:35:22.001 Your paper talks about telecommunications law. 00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:27.001 What are some of the other, like this kind of brings us to from 1700 to the 90s 00:35:27.001 --> 00:35:30.000 when we were talking about the DMCA to the present, right? 00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:33.001 The problematic present of copyright existence. 00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:37.000 What are some of the other areas of law that are complicating the copyright 00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:41.001 question and maybe getting in the way of us being able to come to a place where 00:35:41.001 --> 00:35:43.001 works are more broadly accessible? 00:35:45.001 --> 00:35:47.001 I mean, a lot of the fall under the consumer protection, 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:49.001 that's like mentioned, like privacy. 00:35:49.001 --> 00:35:52.001 Privacy is implicated in the use of all that. 00:35:53.000 --> 00:35:56.001 Like Amazon is tracking every single keystroke you're making on that Kindle. 00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:00.000 They know what you're doing, what you're reading, how long you spend on a book. 00:36:00.001 --> 00:36:03.000 So privacy rights are involved as our confidentiality 00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:04.001 and big data issues, I think. 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:11.001 Yeah, and Michelle, totally cosigned privacy, cosigned contract law, obviously. 00:36:11.001 --> 00:36:14.001 I always think when we think about internet law, the original sins of internet 00:36:14.001 --> 00:36:19.001 law lie in the seven circuits cases around click wrap and shrink wrap contract, 00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:26.001 which allow the relationships between rights holders and users to basically be 00:36:26.001 --> 00:36:33.000 set in totally unfavorable to the user, totally friendly to the publisher terms. 00:36:33.001 --> 00:36:36.000 I think that factors into our modern conversation about antitrust 00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:38.000 law and competition, right? 00:36:38.000 --> 00:36:43.001 We see a lot of, in the same way that power gets exercised in the contract, it 00:36:43.001 --> 00:36:48.000 gets exercised by folks who have centralized power, our accumulated power 00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:49.001 through a lack of competition. 00:36:50.001 --> 00:36:54.000 Just real quick on telecommunications law, I actually point that out as an 00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:58.000 example of where, and I do this in the paper talking about closed captioning as 00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:03.000 kind of a countervailing story, of where it actually can go right, which is, the 00:37:03.000 --> 00:37:08.000 FCC in the 90s basically implements closed captioning regulations that require 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:12.001 all television to be closed captioned with some exceptions and goes 00:37:12.001 --> 00:37:14.001 basically to the television industry. 00:37:14.001 --> 00:37:18.001 And so the broadcast cable satellite companies and the studios, like you 00:37:18.001 --> 00:37:20.001 have to do this, figure it out. 00:37:20.001 --> 00:37:21.001 Here's all the details. 00:37:21.001 --> 00:37:23.001 We're gonna sort of make you do it. 00:37:23.001 --> 00:37:27.001 And the funny thing about that one is, is actually copyright comes up, right? 00:37:27.001 --> 00:37:32.000 The rights holders actually stepped in or like, boy, I don't know, like, you 00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:34.000 know, this sort of interferes with, you 00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:35.001 know, some of them were rights holders themselves. 00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:37.001 This interferes with our autonomy. 00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:41.001 Some distributors stepped in and said, well, this is gonna cause, get us in 00:37:41.001 --> 00:37:43.001 trouble for violating other people's copyright. 00:37:43.001 --> 00:37:46.001 If we add captions to things, like copyright's the real problem. 00:37:47.000 --> 00:37:52.000 And the FCC, bless its heart, is not like really close to copyright law. 00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:55.001 And basically its response is like, well, we don't know about all this copyright 00:37:55.001 --> 00:37:59.001 law stuff, but we assume you guys are contracting around all this stuff anyway. 00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:01.000 So go figure it out. 00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:05.001 Like, we're not gonna like let you blow up this really important set of public 00:38:05.001 --> 00:38:09.000 goods that Congress has enshrined in the law by all of this, 00:38:09.000 --> 00:38:11.000 you know, this stuff about copyright. 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:13.001 Like, go contract around it or fair use, whatever. 00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:14.001 Like, we don't care. 00:38:14.001 --> 00:38:16.000 And sort it out. 00:38:16.001 --> 00:38:22.001 And so I think that shows an example of where we can focus on what is the public 00:38:22.001 --> 00:38:27.000 good that we're actually trying to achieve here and how do we get there rather 00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:34.000 than focusing on the sort of means to get there as being centered in copyright. 00:38:35.001 --> 00:38:39.001 Because the problem with using copyright is, another second theme of both of your 00:38:39.001 --> 00:38:42.000 papers is that it was capitalism all along. 00:38:43.000 --> 00:38:46.000 Profits are driving a lot of this policymaking in a negative 00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:47.001 direction away from the public interest. 00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:52.000 So how have the profits of whether it's publishers or producers or other 00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:56.000 copyright owners, how have those driven policies and practices that 00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:57.001 don't serve the public interest? 00:38:58.000 --> 00:39:01.001 They either prevent it from being served or just don't advance it. 00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:06.001 Bell, you're on first now. 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:09.000 Yeah, so I was just gonna [...] 00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:13.001 It's not all, speaking for books particularly, it gets more complicated when 00:39:13.001 --> 00:39:15.001 we're looking at music and movies and television. 00:39:16.000 --> 00:39:18.000 The thing for books, it is not all publishers. 00:39:18.001 --> 00:39:21.000 I mean, there are some publishers that do actually have models that 00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:22.001 work that are not driven by profit. 00:39:23.000 --> 00:39:25.001 We know about university presses, for example, which 00:39:25.001 --> 00:39:27.000 often do not have the same model. 00:39:27.001 --> 00:39:33.000 But where you see the most destructive practices is in the for profit areas and 00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:35.001 with the major publishers who do make most of their 00:39:35.001 --> 00:39:37.000 income off of individual sale. 00:39:37.001 --> 00:39:40.001 And when you take a look at it, I mean, I don't really think that I have to 00:39:40.001 --> 00:39:43.000 explain the publishers themselves have said, essentially they 00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:44.001 like the idea of licensing. 00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:48.001 They like the idea of cutting off the ability to buy a book because they can 00:39:48.001 --> 00:39:52.000 insure through licensing that every end user has to pay for it. 00:39:52.001 --> 00:39:55.001 There is no second hand use and that is good for their bottom line. 00:39:56.000 --> 00:40:02.000 So how profit actually, I think gets in the way of copyright is, it just, if your 00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:04.001 purpose is to make as much money as possible, you're not 00:40:04.001 --> 00:40:06.001 going to want to have fair use. 00:40:06.001 --> 00:40:09.000 You're not going to want to have any of the downstream uses. 00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:12.000 You simply want to get money by every user. 00:40:12.001 --> 00:40:16.000 And that I think is just not something that's 00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:17.001 harmonious with the concept of copyright. 00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:20.001 Yeah, I agree. 00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:26.000 I think the, you know, there's so many places where the kinds of fair uses we're 00:40:26.000 --> 00:40:31.001 talking about here can be seen to cut into revenue streams. 00:40:32.000 --> 00:40:36.000 But I also think it's about, as we talk about things like privacy and 00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:40.000 accessibility, consumer protection and so forth, keeping the conversation 00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.000 centered on, we don't want fair use and you're going to have 00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:45.001 to fight for every inch of it. 00:40:45.001 --> 00:40:48.000 And you might emerge at the end of it with a little bit of 00:40:48.000 --> 00:40:49.001 what you think you deserve. 00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:55.000 Keeps the conversation away from the production of those public goods, privacy, 00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:58.001 accessibility, you know, fair transactions and that kind of thing, which are 00:40:58.001 --> 00:41:00.000 also going to cost money, right? 00:41:00.001 --> 00:41:02.000 Accessibility costs money, right? 00:41:02.000 --> 00:41:06.001 It takes resources to put together works in accessible formats. 00:41:06.001 --> 00:41:08.001 Privacy costs money, right? 00:41:08.001 --> 00:41:14.000 So much of the revenue around books, for example, is subsidized by, 00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:15.001 you know, collecting data, right? 00:41:15.001 --> 00:41:17.000 I mean, or look at video, right? 00:41:17.001 --> 00:41:24.000 Take a look at what Netflix does in terms of viewing habits and how it uses that 00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:28.000 to focus its forward-looking development and all of that kind of stuff. 00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:34.000 So I also think the focus, keeping the conversation focused on that individual 00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:38.000 transaction and then sort of like what you're allowed to do after it keeps the 00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:41.000 conversation away from, how should this be? 00:41:41.000 --> 00:41:44.001 What should public policy look like around these industries? 00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.001 Because what's at the end of the rainbow for those conversations is not gonna be 00:41:49.001 --> 00:41:51.001 good for the revenue of these industries either. 00:41:53.000 --> 00:41:56.001 No, but before I move to the end of the rainbow, and I promise we will go there, 00:41:57.000 --> 00:42:01.000 what do y'all think the biggest threat that's currently posed by copyright 00:42:01.000 --> 00:42:04.001 serving the public interest is, or to, I guess, copyright itself as essentially? 00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:06.001 Is it licensing shifts? 00:42:06.001 --> 00:42:08.000 Is it the permission culture? 00:42:08.001 --> 00:42:10.000 Those are two of the ones you've mentioned. 00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:13.000 Or is it some other secret option letter C 00:42:13.000 --> 00:42:15.000 threat that we haven't talked about yet? 00:42:19.000 --> 00:42:21.000 I'll take a stab at this one first. 00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:27.001 I mean, so I think of something that Cindy Cohn from EFF, or the director of EFF 00:42:27.001 --> 00:42:33.000 for many years, and still, I think, told me one time, which is, you gotta stop 00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:35.000 looking at the world through copyright goggles. 00:42:35.001 --> 00:42:37.000 I've always thought about that. 00:42:37.001 --> 00:42:43.001 And I actually think that is a pretty existential problem for the 00:42:43.001 --> 00:42:45.000 sort of copyright industries. 00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:52.000 And I think for the constituencies that they serve as well, to sort of think of 00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:57.001 whatever the problem is, copyright is going to be the solution. 00:42:57.001 --> 00:43:02.000 And twiddling some bit of copyright, whether we're talking about the terms on 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:07.000 which we can license, the contours of fair use, whether it's the ability to 00:43:07.000 --> 00:43:13.000 litigate copyright claims, think about the case act and the tribunal, or thinking 00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:18.000 about whatever other substantive contour of copyright is the way of solving, for 00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:23.000 example, things like the ability for creators to make a living, right? 00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:25.000 Thinking, oh, hello. 00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:32.001 Thinking about the ability to solve all of the public policy problems that they 00:43:32.001 --> 00:43:36.000 face, that their communities face as well. 00:43:36.001 --> 00:43:41.001 And assuming that we can find the answers to that in the limited array of levers 00:43:41.001 --> 00:43:43.001 and dials that copyright provides us. 00:43:45.001 --> 00:43:46.001 And you can see it, right? 00:43:46.001 --> 00:43:51.000 It's like we have starving artists who can't get health insurance. 00:43:51.001 --> 00:43:56.001 Instead of talking about health insurance as a problem, or medical care as a 00:43:56.001 --> 00:44:02.000 problem in this country, we're going to talk about like, you know, monkeying with 00:44:02.000 --> 00:44:04.000 the royalty rates or something like that, right? 00:44:04.001 --> 00:44:08.001 We're going to always put it in sort of copyright terms and instead 00:44:08.001 --> 00:44:10.000 of going at the problems directly. 00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.001 And so I see that as the biggest problem is just being constrained by that lens 00:44:14.001 --> 00:44:16.001 of copyright and looking through copyright goggles. 00:44:19.000 --> 00:44:25.000 I do think there actually is quite a bit of action on exactly what Blake's 00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.001 talking about, that everyone is realizing that copyright, copyright can be a 00:44:29.001 --> 00:44:33.001 barrier, but there are a lot of solutions that are possible outside of copyright. 00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:36.001 And so I hope that there is attention to that. 00:44:36.001 --> 00:44:41.000 Within copyright, and actually for a lot of issues, including health care, I 00:44:41.000 --> 00:44:46.000 actually think that the biggest barrier to real reform, to the effectiveness of 00:44:46.000 --> 00:44:50.000 copyright, to the effectiveness of pretty much everything, is too much 00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:51.001 difference to money. 00:44:52.000 --> 00:44:54.000 It's too much difference to publishers. 00:44:54.000 --> 00:44:55.001 It's too much difference to business. 00:44:56.001 --> 00:45:01.000 If we actually look at the welfare of people, if we look at the welfare of 00:45:01.000 --> 00:45:05.001 society, short-term and long-term, I think we end up coming up with a completely 00:45:05.001 --> 00:45:11.000 different set of priorities and a completely different set of rules, legislation. 00:45:11.001 --> 00:45:16.000 But unless that happens, I don't really see anything changing. 00:45:17.000 --> 00:45:21.000 Yeah, and Michelle, just to underscore, I completely agree within copyright, and 00:45:21.000 --> 00:45:24.001 I think there are still a huge swath of problems that 00:45:24.001 --> 00:45:26.000 need to be solved with copyright. 00:45:26.001 --> 00:45:31.001 The sort of fealty to the interests of industrial rights holders, 00:45:32.000 --> 00:45:33.001 and not artists either. 00:45:34.000 --> 00:45:38.000 I feel like we always make this mistake in copyright debates to sort of assume 00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:43.001 that the industrial rights holders are the same as artists, but just focusing on 00:45:43.001 --> 00:45:48.000 what the sort of bottom line impact for them is gonna be, and not what is 00:45:48.000 --> 00:45:51.000 ultimately gonna serve artists, what's ultimately gonna serve 00:45:51.000 --> 00:45:53.000 readers and viewers and users. 00:45:53.001 --> 00:45:57.001 Not having that robust conversation, not having all those folks at the table and 00:45:57.001 --> 00:46:03.000 taking their opinions seriously, that makes it hard to get good copyright policy 00:46:03.000 --> 00:46:06.000 for the things that copyright is good at solving. 00:46:06.001 --> 00:46:09.000 And so just total plus one on that. 00:46:10.001 --> 00:46:14.000 I feel like we spend a lot of time talking about all of the troubles and 00:46:14.000 --> 00:46:18.000 tribulations that copyright has created for not just creators, and in some ways 00:46:18.000 --> 00:46:21.001 artists, but also for end users, libraries, for a variety of 00:46:21.001 --> 00:46:23.001 patrons, for a variety of people. 00:46:24.001 --> 00:46:29.000 But I don't want us to end on that note, because that seems like a huge bummer. 00:46:29.001 --> 00:46:34.000 So I wanna get optimistic, and imagine what might go right 00:46:34.000 --> 00:46:35.001 in copyright's fantastic future. 00:46:35.001 --> 00:46:39.000 Let's just pretend that there is a fantastic future for copyright, which I know 00:46:39.000 --> 00:46:42.000 requires us to use our imaginations really robustly. 00:46:42.001 --> 00:46:47.000 One of the questions I actually had for y'all was, is the best hope for reversing 00:46:47.000 --> 00:46:49.001 the trend of copyright maximalism de-centering copyright entirely? 00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:52.000 And you both touched on that in different ways, and it seems like 00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:54.000 sometimes the answer is yes. 00:46:54.001 --> 00:46:58.001 But I do have a kind of, like a, just a curious question. 00:46:59.000 --> 00:47:03.000 Is there any copyright policy that makes you optimistic in any way that currently 00:47:03.000 --> 00:47:05.000 exists and that could be invoked in the future? 00:47:08.000 --> 00:47:11.000 Aside from fair use, like when you talk about copyright... 00:47:11.000 --> 00:47:12.000 Oh, you can use fair use. 00:47:12.000 --> 00:47:13.001 You can take fair use off the board. 00:47:13.001 --> 00:47:14.001 No one's stopping you. 00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:19.001 I mean, I think fair use has a tremendous amount of promise. 00:47:19.001 --> 00:47:22.001 There is a lot that I think that we actually can do with copyright reward. 00:47:24.000 --> 00:47:25.000 Justifying it through fair use. 00:47:25.001 --> 00:47:29.001 The difficulty with that is that anyone who really wants to be creative is going 00:47:29.001 --> 00:47:32.000 to have to be willing to essentially be sued. 00:47:33.000 --> 00:47:36.001 Anyone who's willing to be creative, who's willing to test those barriers, those 00:47:36.001 --> 00:47:40.001 limits, they have to be willing to go through a very, very 00:47:40.001 --> 00:47:42.000 lengthy court suit, and that is unfortunate. 00:47:42.000 --> 00:47:46.001 But I would say that I see a great deal of promise in fair use and how flexible 00:47:46.001 --> 00:47:51.000 it is in adapting to whatever technologies, whatever society, whatever 00:47:51.000 --> 00:47:52.001 needs come down the pike. 00:47:53.000 --> 00:47:54.001 It has the ability to do that. 00:47:55.001 --> 00:47:56.001 Flexibility of fair use for a win. 00:47:57.000 --> 00:48:00.000 I love alliteration, so I'm even more excited about that particular option. 00:48:00.001 --> 00:48:01.001 Blake, what do you think? 00:48:02.000 --> 00:48:03.001 Flexibility of fair use, something else? 00:48:04.000 --> 00:48:08.001 Now I'm feeling a lot of pressure to come up with my own alliteration, but 00:48:08.001 --> 00:48:12.000 yeah, totally agree on fair use. 00:48:12.001 --> 00:48:17.000 I guess the other one I would say is I think about the arcs of these sort of 00:48:17.000 --> 00:48:20.000 public goods that we've talked about in generally, whether that's consumer 00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.000 protection or privacy or accessibility or competition policy or whatever else. 00:48:24.001 --> 00:48:27.000 And I see that they have pretty long arcs. 00:48:27.000 --> 00:48:31.001 And I think about, for example, where the FCC was on closed 00:48:31.001 --> 00:48:33.001 captioning in the 1970s, right? 00:48:33.001 --> 00:48:38.000 The FCC had to be sort of dragged into thinking about accessibility. 00:48:39.000 --> 00:48:42.001 And I think a lot of these public goods that we're talking about in the 00:48:42.001 --> 00:48:45.001 communities that are associated with them, whether that's people with 00:48:45.001 --> 00:48:50.001 disabilities or vidders or folks who are repairing stuff or libraries or whoever 00:48:50.001 --> 00:48:56.001 else, continuing to engage with the machinery of copyright policymaking and 00:48:56.001 --> 00:49:02.000 continuing to participate in those conversations and to be at the Copyright 00:49:02.000 --> 00:49:06.000 Office, to be at the Library of Congress, to be engaging with the White House, to 00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:10.000 be engaging with the IP committees in Congress. 00:49:11.000 --> 00:49:18.000 I think there's education and there is dialogue that can happen there that has 00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:23.001 changed how we view things, even looking back to when the DMCA was created 20 00:49:23.001 --> 00:49:28.001 years ago and the first raft of sort of tech and IP clinics were created. 00:49:28.001 --> 00:49:31.001 I think there's a lot more representation in those forums now. 00:49:32.000 --> 00:49:35.000 And I think that has the potential over time. 00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:41.001 I'm an optimist that those voices that didn't get brought to the table 00:49:41.001 --> 00:49:47.001 back in the 90s, back in the 70s, dating way back to the 1909 Act, I 00:49:47.001 --> 00:49:49.000 think they can get brought to the table. 00:49:49.000 --> 00:49:52.001 And I'm a believer in trying to have those conversations 00:49:52.001 --> 00:49:54.001 and trying to find some balance. 00:49:55.000 --> 00:50:00.000 I think one of the places that we see that sort of potential site of resistance 00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:02.001 among all of those different coalitions that you just mentioned, Blake, which 00:50:02.001 --> 00:50:07.001 were so rich and also totally absent from a lot of the conversations throughout 00:50:07.001 --> 00:50:10.000 copyright history, that we can see potentially 00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:12.000 influencing the conversation going forward. 00:50:12.001 --> 00:50:16.000 Another big one is libraries, which is sort of Michelle's incredibly 00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:17.001 nuanced value act. 00:50:17.001 --> 00:50:21.000 And like, what is one thing you would love to see libraries pushing for in the 00:50:21.000 --> 00:50:25.000 future of copyright to add to the conversation that Blake was just saying is 00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:28.001 being enriched by more people being part of the dialogue at the Copyright Office 00:50:28.001 --> 00:50:33.000 and the Triennial Rulemakings, or indeed, if there are other potential 00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:35.001 modifications to copyright law, what would you like to see libraries 00:50:35.001 --> 00:50:37.001 contributing to that conversation, Michelle? 00:50:38.001 --> 00:50:44.000 So honestly, what I would like is something that is worldwide, which I'm not 00:50:44.000 --> 00:50:49.000 entirely sure is possible, but I would actually like a worldwide digital library 00:50:49.000 --> 00:50:53.000 of all published work, which I think is technically possible. 00:50:54.001 --> 00:50:58.001 But whether or not laws from different nations get in the way, I think it will. 00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:00.000 But I certainly think it's possible. 00:51:00.001 --> 00:51:05.000 I think that what any library cannot do by itself, all libraries can do together 00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:07.000 and all libraries can do for society. 00:51:07.001 --> 00:51:11.001 I mean, the preservation of our history, the preservation of publications, it 00:51:11.001 --> 00:51:14.001 should be important enough to every single nation that we 00:51:14.001 --> 00:51:16.001 should be willing to invest in it. 00:51:17.000 --> 00:51:19.001 But we just haven't gotten there yet. 00:51:20.001 --> 00:51:21.001 What are the possibilities? 00:51:22.000 --> 00:51:22.001 Jump in. 00:51:23.001 --> 00:51:25.000 Go Amanda, go, go, go. 00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:28.000 I'm going to another question. So please continue your line of thought. 00:51:29.000 --> 00:51:33.001 I was actually going to give a general version of the specific thing that 00:51:33.001 --> 00:51:39.000 Michelle just said, which is, I think articulating a normative version and 00:51:39.000 --> 00:51:44.000 executing and iterating on that normative version of what libraries look like in 00:51:44.000 --> 00:51:49.001 a digital age, what that should mean to the citizens of 00:51:49.001 --> 00:51:51.001 2020 and beyond. 00:51:52.000 --> 00:51:53.001 I think it's critical. 00:51:53.001 --> 00:51:59.000 I think we're in this very weird time where we don't know 00:51:59.000 --> 00:52:01.000 exactly what that is. 00:52:01.001 --> 00:52:06.000 And it seems like the publishers are trying to articulate a world 00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:07.001 where there are no libraries anymore. 00:52:07.001 --> 00:52:12.001 Some of the policy moves that I see publishers make are hard to 00:52:12.001 --> 00:52:14.001 explain other than by... 00:52:16.001 --> 00:52:20.001 We couldn't have had libraries in the first place if this view had taken hold. 00:52:21.000 --> 00:52:27.001 So I think articulating that really grand vision that like Michelle just did is 00:52:27.001 --> 00:52:32.000 so critical for libraries to do to say, this is the place in our digital 00:52:32.000 --> 00:52:37.000 community that libraries hold and we need a copyright policy to match that. 00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:43.001 This is not just the library policy of the 1970s. This is the library policy 00:52:43.001 --> 00:52:47.000 of whatever the future looks like. 00:52:47.001 --> 00:52:49.001 So I think that's super critical. 00:52:50.001 --> 00:52:52.001 That actually brings us into a question from the chat. 00:52:53.001 --> 00:52:58.001 And I'm going to slightly rehash it to give a broader sort of question, which is 00:52:58.001 --> 00:53:03.001 the person was asking whether a conference akin to the Marrakech Treaty could be 00:53:03.001 --> 00:53:07.001 possible to justify something like, general user rights or I'm going to 00:53:07.001 --> 00:53:09.000 include general patron rights. 00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.001 And it's really hard because the Marrakech Treaty was hashed out over such a long 00:53:14.001 --> 00:53:20.001 period of time and was so deeply embattled among various constituencies over many 00:53:20.001 --> 00:53:22.000 years in ways it's... 00:53:22.001 --> 00:53:26.000 It ended up in a place that was really powerful, but it's not necessarily a model 00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:28.001 of success in terms of its procedure. 00:53:28.001 --> 00:53:33.000 So what do you think about something that's an international gathering that talks 00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:35.001 about the rights of users or the rights of patrons? 00:53:39.000 --> 00:53:41.001 I mean, international law... I'm sorry, go ahead, Michelle. 00:53:42.001 --> 00:53:44.000 Go ahead, Blake. You go first. 00:53:47.000 --> 00:53:48.001 International law is tough. 00:53:48.001 --> 00:53:53.001 It's the time and the resources that it takes to meaningfully engage in that 00:53:53.001 --> 00:53:55.001 process really, really hard. 00:53:55.001 --> 00:53:59.000 And I think Marrakech stands as the sort of exception 00:53:59.000 --> 00:54:00.001 that demonstrates that rule. 00:54:01.001 --> 00:54:06.001 But I think, you know, one thing you can take away from Marrakech as a success 00:54:06.001 --> 00:54:08.001 story to the extent... 00:54:08.001 --> 00:54:13.001 And Marrakech was successful in a number of regards, you know, that we have 00:54:13.001 --> 00:54:16.001 specific exceptions and limitations around the 00:54:16.001 --> 00:54:18.000 world for people with disabilities. 00:54:18.000 --> 00:54:23.001 Now, it's really, really important. And I'd want to underrate the impact of that. 00:54:24.000 --> 00:54:30.000 I think the critical thing that let Marrakech succeed was having that big vision 00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:36.000 like the one that Michelle just laid out and saying, this is the library that we 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:39.000 need of the future. We had it in Marrakech. We had the right to 00:54:39.000 --> 00:54:40.001 read. We had ending the book famine. 00:54:40.001 --> 00:54:47.000 We had those kind of ambitious touchstones that let all of the minutiae of 00:54:47.000 --> 00:54:52.001 international law and negotiation, copyright minutiae and all of that sort of... 00:54:52.001 --> 00:54:56.001 At the end of the day, ended up being subordinate to that because it was so hard 00:54:56.001 --> 00:54:59.001 to argue with the vision that everyone should have the right to read. 00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.001 Right. And so I think having that vision, we need to have a library that has 00:55:04.001 --> 00:55:09.001 every book available, you know, a universal digital library, that kind of thing. 00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:13.001 You know, that's the kind of thing that people can understand. And that's the 00:55:13.001 --> 00:55:16.001 kind of thing that can give birth to these kind of successful international 00:55:16.001 --> 00:55:19.000 movements. I'm sorry, Michelle, I didn't mean to step on your toes. 00:55:20.001 --> 00:55:25.000 No, I mean, I think you've phrased it perfectly. And I do think international law 00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:29.000 is particularly difficult when it comes to copyright simply because it does vary 00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:31.000 despite all the treaties vary so widely. 00:55:31.001 --> 00:55:36.001 Just take a look at fair use. It's so uniquely American. Even with fair dealing 00:55:36.001 --> 00:55:42.000 in other countries, many countries don't have anything like it. So trying to come 00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:46.001 up with something that works everywhere is difficult. I do think there is a path 00:55:46.001 --> 00:55:51.001 right now, curiously, that is tied with all the discussions with climate change. 00:55:51.001 --> 00:55:58.000 Right. We already know that Haiti has once before lost all of its information 00:55:58.000 --> 00:56:04.000 resources. And I think a hurricane it was. And everyone is at greater risk today 00:56:04.000 --> 00:56:06.001 than they were yesterday and will be at greater risk tomorrow. 00:56:06.001 --> 00:56:11.000 So I think an argument can be made that building this National Digital Library is 00:56:11.000 --> 00:56:16.000 the only way to ensure the preservation of the world's history. Now, whether or 00:56:16.000 --> 00:56:20.001 not they will ultimately extend the patrons, which is what matters most to me is 00:56:20.001 --> 00:56:24.001 that we don't just save the information, but it is accessible information. 00:56:25.001 --> 00:56:28.001 That's because the harder sell by at least think that we can get to the first 00:56:28.001 --> 00:56:34.001 step of building that library, maybe by essentially holding on to climate change 00:56:34.001 --> 00:56:38.000 and saying, Listen, this is at least a solution to a partial 00:56:38.000 --> 00:56:40.000 problem, we should address it now. 00:56:42.000 --> 00:56:45.001 So to bring that back to copyright law because I think that is all closely 00:56:45.001 --> 00:56:48.001 related and one of the conversations we're going to have to have or what levers 00:56:48.001 --> 00:56:53.000 can be pressed to make copyright change by invoking other crises right and I 00:56:53.000 --> 00:56:55.001 think climate is definitely one of those options. 00:56:56.000 --> 00:56:59.001 But both of the papers. This is the sort of final theme of the two papers 00:56:59.001 --> 00:57:04.000 together, is this importance of accessible knowledge right it's no good if it's 00:57:04.000 --> 00:57:07.000 just preserved somewhere it has to be available to the 00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:08.001 public in order for it to be useful. 00:57:08.001 --> 00:57:14.000 And so what is one concrete policy or practice you'd like to see adopted related 00:57:14.000 --> 00:57:18.001 to copyright law that could increase accessibility for all humankind, or at least 00:57:18.001 --> 00:57:21.000 all American citizens or all American residents. 00:57:28.001 --> 00:57:32.000 I asked a stumper I'm sorry I didn't mean to, we have one more question so don't 00:57:32.000 --> 00:57:33.001 worry I'll ask an easy one next time. 00:57:36.001 --> 00:57:38.000 I'm not sure I have an answer that late. 00:57:39.001 --> 00:57:45.000 Yeah, that's a, that's a tough one so so I'm one, one thing related to copyright 00:57:45.000 --> 00:57:50.001 law to increase accessibility. I mean, I, you know, one, one interesting idea I'm 00:57:50.001 --> 00:57:54.001 not sure if I if I like this idea but I've heard it enough times in talking about 00:57:54.001 --> 00:57:59.000 this paper that that I think I throw it out there, which is to think about 00:57:59.000 --> 00:58:06.000 conditioning copyright protection on the 00:58:06.000 --> 00:58:10.000 provision of some of the public goods that we've talking talked about right in 00:58:10.000 --> 00:58:15.000 other words, condition, your receipt of copyright and your ability to assert 00:58:15.000 --> 00:58:20.001 copyright is a right on your, your, you know, respect for privacy on your, your 00:58:20.001 --> 00:58:26.001 provision of works in accessible formats, your, you know, your treatment of 00:58:26.001 --> 00:58:31.000 consumers and that kind of thing in other words like trying to hitch copyright 00:58:31.000 --> 00:58:35.001 protection and the grant of copyright protection into some of these ideas I think 00:58:35.001 --> 00:58:40.001 that's kind of an interesting idea I'm not sure I endorse it but since you said I 00:58:40.001 --> 00:58:43.000 had to do something related to copyright law that's that's the 00:58:43.000 --> 00:58:44.001 most interesting one I've heard recently. 00:58:45.000 --> 00:58:50.001 I think that's great. I like that. So, my proposal is, is much more basic and 00:58:50.001 --> 00:58:54.001 that's to, I think, to reduce copyright back to down to 14 years. 00:58:56.000 --> 00:58:59.001 If we could reduce the term of copyright protection that would do 00:58:59.001 --> 00:59:01.001 amazing things for accessibility. 00:59:03.000 --> 00:59:08.000 Yeah, there's a lot there's a lot of dreamy options that are not totally off the 00:59:08.000 --> 00:59:11.001 table but not totally on the table that I think it's important to consider and 00:59:11.001 --> 00:59:13.001 fantasize about in a collective way. 00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:18.001 So it feels celebratory instead of deeply sad. But that actually brings me to the 00:59:18.001 --> 00:59:22.000 final question I have, which is going to be a riff on somebody's question which 00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:26.001 is, what are some of the ways that individuals can meaningfully, meaningfully 00:59:26.001 --> 00:59:29.001 contribute to these policy discussions involving copyright. 00:59:29.001 --> 00:59:34.000 Are there ways for individuals to get involved in these conversations to push the 00:59:34.000 --> 00:59:36.001 needle in one direction towards accessibility. 00:59:38.001 --> 00:59:44.001 Yeah, I mean I think about, and actually this is a lot of the work that that my 00:59:44.001 --> 00:59:49.000 student attorneys do and my clinic and Amanda I know that yours, yours do as 00:59:49.000 --> 00:59:55.001 well, is that the the Copyright Office does a tremendous amount of of studying 00:59:55.001 --> 01:00:02.000 of these issues from, you know, right now the thing that sticks out the most is, 01:00:02.000 --> 01:00:08.001 is thinking about extra protections for news publishers and what that, you know, 01:00:08.001 --> 01:00:12.001 sort of akin to the Australia and your European models. 01:00:12.001 --> 01:00:17.000 So they do lots of these, these sort of rule makings and studies where they, 01:00:17.000 --> 01:00:22.001 where they take public comment. And, you know, my experience of the Copyright 01:00:22.001 --> 01:00:27.001 Office is they sort of expect the rights holders to come in and then they sort of 01:00:27.001 --> 01:00:33.001 expect the sort of copy leftists of the world to come in and, you know, make the 01:00:33.001 --> 01:00:39.000 maximalist and minimalist pitches respectively. And what I've seen a number of 01:00:39.000 --> 01:00:45.000 times over the years is when they hear from people who are really affected by how 01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:50.000 copyright policy works in their everyday activities, whether that's hearing from 01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:54.001 librarians about how copyright affects their work, whether that's hearing from 01:00:54.001 --> 01:01:00.001 people with disabilities or disability services professionals or are hearing from 01:01:00.001 --> 01:01:04.000 people that are that are trying to repair their stuff or hearing from vidders 01:01:04.000 --> 01:01:09.000 hearing from remixers hearing from people directly that have this experience with 01:01:09.000 --> 01:01:13.001 copyright and have something to share. So engaging with that public comment 01:01:13.001 --> 01:01:18.001 process and providing those real stories that aren't, you know, the, the sort of 01:01:18.001 --> 01:01:22.000 maximalist minimalist but like here's how this plays out in real life. 01:01:22.001 --> 01:01:26.001 And I will just say if that's you and you feel like you've, you've got a that 01:01:26.001 --> 01:01:30.000 story or you've got a better yet a group of people for whom that story is true. 01:01:30.000 --> 01:01:35.000 I'm always happy to talk to folks about that because sometimes we can see from 01:01:35.000 --> 01:01:39.000 from paying attention to what the Copyright Office is up to you or what the, the 01:01:39.000 --> 01:01:43.000 committees in Congress are up to that'd be really powerful to go share that story 01:01:43.000 --> 01:01:45.001 and that's something that that clinics can help with. 01:01:45.001 --> 01:01:49.001 Yeah, and before Michelle you're welcome to jump in but I just want to address a 01:01:49.001 --> 01:01:52.001 second question that was on the queue from somebody else from a different angle 01:01:52.001 --> 01:01:56.000 which is what can we do as lawyers, recognizing that this is such a political 01:01:56.000 --> 01:01:59.001 question and such a not a political question the legal sense but a political 01:01:59.001 --> 01:02:03.000 question in the practical sense. How can we as lawyers be involved and I think 01:02:03.000 --> 01:02:07.000 Blake has identified one way which is representing individuals or small 01:02:07.000 --> 01:02:12.000 coalitions that have stories to tell that otherwise would not be told, and that 01:02:12.000 --> 01:02:18.000 disrupt that maximalist minimalist ping pong expectation at the Copyright Office 01:02:18.000 --> 01:02:21.000 those stories need to be told and as a lawyer, it can be really powerful for you 01:02:21.000 --> 01:02:25.000 to represent those groups, although clinics also can do the job. 01:02:26.001 --> 01:02:27.001 And in [...] 01:02:29.001 --> 01:02:34.000 So, tough one to all of Blake's comments and as well as yours. And I will say 01:02:34.000 --> 01:02:38.001 that it's what would be very helpful for lawyers to do I think is just providing 01:02:38.001 --> 01:02:43.001 a cover it is really not all that easy to understand, I think a lot of authors 01:02:43.001 --> 01:02:48.000 don't even know what their rights are. So even creating a toolkit for authors to 01:02:48.000 --> 01:02:52.000 understand how to how to do all sorts of things or what their rights are with 01:02:52.000 --> 01:02:54.001 their works, I think would be very useful. 01:02:55.001 --> 01:02:59.001 Also for the general public specifically researchers, I would say, is doing 01:02:59.001 --> 01:03:04.000 research that actually defunct a lot of the assumptions that publishers base 01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:09.001 their advocacy on, for example that piracy is so damaging because they've assumed 01:03:09.001 --> 01:03:15.001 that every pirate copy is actually a lock sale. 01:03:16.001 --> 01:03:20.000 Whereas I think that can be easily debunked in terms of a lot of people will 01:03:20.000 --> 01:03:24.001 consume something for free that will not actually pay for it. So I mean where you 01:03:24.001 --> 01:03:31.000 can do research is about a lot of their assumptions that form their arguments for 01:03:31.000 --> 01:03:34.001 why copyright should be the way that it should be. I think researchers can 01:03:34.001 --> 01:03:38.000 actually do that research and confront publishers with hard data. 01:03:38.000 --> 01:03:41.001 I try to do that research all the time when people leave free donuts in the break 01:03:41.001 --> 01:03:45.001 room and I never buy them, I personally am trying to fix this problem. 01:03:46.000 --> 01:03:51.001 One more thing that you can do is be it well yeah be involved with library 01:03:51.001 --> 01:03:54.001 futures, and one place you can go so two things. 01:03:55.000 --> 01:03:59.001 Michelle you brought up authors not knowing their rights and one place you can go 01:03:59.001 --> 01:04:03.000 for more information about that is the Authors Alliance does a really great lot 01:04:03.000 --> 01:04:05.001 of work, putting out resources for authors to teach them 01:04:05.001 --> 01:04:07.000 about the contracts of their work. 01:04:07.000 --> 01:04:11.000 The terms of their agreements and how to negotiate for those things so that's one 01:04:11.000 --> 01:04:14.001 place you can go, but the other place you can go to be involved, whether it's as 01:04:14.001 --> 01:04:19.000 an advocate or an individual is being involved with library futures which I think 01:04:19.000 --> 01:04:24.001 brings me to the end of the panel, so I can kick it over to Jenny, maybe, maybe 01:04:24.001 --> 01:04:26.001 that was really seamless as a transition, let's do it. 01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:36.000 Thank you so much, Amanda and thank you waffles as well for your presentation 01:04:36.000 --> 01:04:42.001 it's important to also thank our pets and thank you of course to Michelle 01:04:42.001 --> 01:04:48.001 and Blake for this fantastic panel and to Chris and Caitlin for supporting us 01:04:48.001 --> 01:04:51.000 with links and follow ups throughout. 01:04:52.000 --> 01:04:57.001 I would love if we could get up our slides just to give a quick shout out to a 01:04:57.001 --> 01:05:04.000 couple of things so save the dates for us on the set on December 15 will 01:05:04.000 --> 01:05:10.000 be doing or around December 15 will be doing a discussion on streaming media with 01:05:10.000 --> 01:05:16.001 some folks from point of view from PBS who are a distributor of streaming media 01:05:17.000 --> 01:05:21.000 DVD's materials for libraries and have a great library program Kathleen dealer 01:05:21.000 --> 01:05:28.000 empty from Johns Hopkins University, and with Chris Paulson from OSU very cool 01:05:28.000 --> 01:05:32.000 panel very excited about it folks have been asking a lot about what we're doing 01:05:32.000 --> 01:05:34.001 in terms of other media that are not just books. 01:05:34.001 --> 01:05:41.000 There will be a public domain day big celebration and 12022 and throughout the 01:05:41.000 --> 01:05:43.001 month of January, we will be celebrating our first 01:05:43.001 --> 01:05:45.001 birthday here at library features. 01:05:46.001 --> 01:05:51.001 So once again thank you so much to Blake and Michelle, there's a lot going on at 01:05:51.001 --> 01:05:58.000 library futures as well that I am so excited to share with everyone, including 01:05:58.000 --> 01:06:02.001 projects around news publishing will be releasing an international statement of 01:06:02.001 --> 01:06:08.000 solidarity to support some international work. And if you join the coalition 01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:12.001 you'll get to be a part of our first conversations around climate, digital 01:06:12.001 --> 01:06:17.000 libraries and ebooks, which kicked off last Friday with a great conversation with 01:06:17.000 --> 01:06:36.000 Sarah Hutton from UMass Amherst and Max and a fantastic conversation, and it is 01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:42.001 no small feat to keep a conversation going over zoom for over an hour and be so 01:06:42.001 --> 01:06:47.001 captivating and fantastic. So thanks again and have a great 01:06:47.001 --> 01:06:49.000 morning afternoon or evening. 01:06:50.000 --> 01:06:55.000 Again, you can reach out to us at info at library futures.net. And we will 01:06:55.000 --> 01:06:58.000 hopefully see you at future events. Thanks again. Bye bye.